Daily Dev Update: Waves, Selections, and Shadow Bolt - August 21, 2025

Period: August 21, 2025 Total Commits: 22

Hey all — today was about getting the match flow to start cleanly, smoothing out the combat loop, and shipping a new tower. Nothing flashy, just making the core PvP loop more reliable.

What’s New

• Shadow Bolt tower
  • New magical damage tower with its own projectile and visuals. Converted configs to TypeScript and registered in both tower and bullet systems (12cea06).
  • Uses the new rotation/spawn fixes so it actually points the right way and fires from the right spot.
  • Expect it to pair well with physical damage towers for mixed damage coverage. Balance is still loose; we’ll tune it with play.
  • [screenshot: Shadow Bolt tower firing at 12cea06]
• Manual level purchase + per‑player unlocks
  • Leveling is now a manual purchase: Level 2 costs 500g. You choose your own +1 tower and +1 minion per level (8a231ca).
  • Initial selection flow: First time in, you pick 2 towers + 2 minions. The modal won’t let you skip (07338a6).
  • The Level Up button lives under team gold, pulses green when you can afford it.
  • [screenshot: starting unit selection modal at 07338a6]
• Wave start logic
  • Waves now wait for both teams to lock in their 2+2. We fixed event routing so SimCore actually sees your selections and starts the countdown when both sides are ready (6386300).
• Sprite/animation improvements
  • Dynamic sprite sheet layouts per unit. Blacksmith’s non‑standard sheet now renders correctly (5ff829a).
  • [screenshot: blacksmith animation correct frames at 5ff829a]
  • Proper tower presentation: scale restored to 4/3 and y‑offset raised 1/8 tile for cleaner placement (b572a54, 71368c6).
  • [screenshot: tower scale/offset cleanup on the grid at b572a54]

What Got Fixed

• Combat feel and sync
  • Moved to a 30fps continuous simulation with immediate projectile spawns. Towers acquire targets using Euclidean distance and fire without delay (1dfa149).
  • Animation sync: attack animations line up with actual firing events; per‑tower animations no longer share state (ca07648, aa8c934).
  • Projectile rotation and spawn offsets corrected (add π, convert angle systems, invert Y where needed). Bolts/arrows now fly in the right direction from the right place (4eabeeb, ed94581).
  • Damage application lives on the projectile now for clearer ordering and fewer edge cases (24a766e).
  • [screenshot: arrows and bolts tracking targets correctly at 4eabeeb]
• Match flow and UI
  • Selections → SimCore: SelectLevelUnits events are queued and processed centrally, which fixes the wave countdown not starting (6386300).
  • Level purchase display: shows the correct next level and selection counts (Level 1=2+2; Level 2+=1+1). We also re‑fetch level after purchase to keep UI honest (1281f1a, 4b267a0).
  • Initial selection modal appears when needed and won’t close during confirmation to avoid double submits (07338a6).
• Rendering correctness
  • Entities render on the correct board only — no duplicate minions or stray projectiles (0f70085).
  • Deterministic deaths: delta‑time driven cleanup, no more long‑lived dying minions; projectiles bail if their target starts dying (76574d1).
  • GameView init guard: stops accidental re‑inits and cleans up better (8610416).
• Economy checks
  • Minion spawn assignments now check cost and deduct gold. No assigning units you can’t afford (46e75f1).
  • Removed old on‑chain gold reads; gold handling moved client‑side in SimCore to keep the loop responsive (35a5a82, d6d35a6).
  • Purchase events still come from the contract; the client updates state in response for consistency (4b267a0).

What’s Still Broken

• Shadow Bolt balance is placeholder. Numbers will likely change as we see how it fits into PvP comps.
• Client‑side gold is faster but we’re watching for edge cases around refreshes and mid‑transaction states. If you see oddities with gold totals after a purchase, ping us with steps.
• Wave start edge cases: late joiners right as teams lock selections could still hiccup. We added a periodic check to mitigate this but we’re keeping an eye on it (6386300).
• Bots and matchmaking didn’t get attention today. Practice is playable but still basic.

Under the Hood

• Tower owns its combat: projectile creation moved from SimCore into the Tower class. Cleaner separation; EntityRegistry is now a singleton for lifecycle management (57be3dd).
• Renderer shows, SimCore simulates: targeting and acquisition logic moved out of rendering so visuals follow truth, not the other way around (1dfa149).
• Sprite pipeline: dynamic layout detection based on actual texture dimensions; UVs computed per asset. This removes a bunch of hardcoded assumptions (5ff829a).
• Event routing: we now queue SelectLevelUnits, tag them with player team, and let SimCore decide when the match can advance (6386300).

What’s Next

• A balance pass on early unlocks and Shadow Bolt’s role so mixed‑damage comps feel meaningful without crowding out basics.
• Tighter validation around economy flow to avoid rare desyncs and clearer feedback when purchases are mid‑confirmation.
• More VFX polish for impacts and death states, now that timing is deterministic.
• Exploring another starter‑friendly tower to round out the Level 1 pool, plus some love for matchmaking flow.

Thanks for the bug reports and clips — they help us chase the weird edge cases faster. If you hit issues with wave starts or gold updates, send repro steps and we’ll dig in.